Interview: LRA survivor Evelyn Apoko on taking on Joseph Kony and standing up to Rush Limbaugh

Sometimes it takes a phenomenally dumb statement to bring much-needed attention to an important issue. When talk radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves last week to describe the mass-murdering Lord’s Resistance Army as "Christians…fighting the Muslims in Sudan" that the Obama administration was intent of wiping out, it brought widespread condemnation, including from Limbaugh’s political allies, and created an opportunity to discuss the crimes of the LRA.

In particular, a video appeal to Limbaugh made by 22-year-old Evelyn Apoko, who was abducted by the LRA when she was 12 and escaped after years in captivity, was widely circulated online. You can read more about her frankly incredible story here. Apoko now lives in the United States, where she has had several rounds of reconstructive surgery to repair the damage done to her face by shrapnel and is a fellow at the Strongheart Group, an international rehabilitation and education program for young people affected by war.

Yesterday she testified before Congress at a hearing on the Obama administration’s decision to send 100 troops to assist local efforts to capture LRA leader Joseph Kony. After her testimony, she was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Foreign Policy: The video you made recently got a lot of attention. Can you tell me why you thought it was so important to respond to what Rush Limbaugh said?

Evelyn Apoko: When I read about what he said — I don’t know where he got the information, I don’t know where he got it from — and it really hit me hard. How can you say the LRA are Christians? I’m not trying to judge, but it’s which I experienced and I witnessed it and it’s totally different.

I heard that a lot of people here like to listen to him, you know, and I said well I am going to do something about it. I cannot keep quiet about it because I know that, there’s many children still in Congo, still being abducting right now by Joseph Kony. A Christian would no want to do such things to people: try to kill people try, to take children away from their families to become something horrible, you know, brainwash those kids. So that’s why I made that video to let you know that the LRA was not Christians and aren’t what he thinks they are.

FP: So now the United States is becoming at least somewhat more committed to this fight against the LRA. Do you think that if Joseph Kony is either killed or captured, that’s the end of the LRA or are there people who will continue fighting even if he’s taken out?

EA: I think it will make a huge difference if they take Joseph Kony away from the field because all the foundation is built on him. He is like the root of it, and all the other commanders, they follow whatever he says, whatever he offer to the commander they have to do it.

FP: What do you think is the most important first thing that a former child soldier needs in those early days and weeks after they’re taken out of the battlefield?

EA: You know, those kids are, they are real, they are all like us, you know? I never knew that I was the person that I always wanted to be, you know? It wasn’t until I escaped and came back home, I found people who were willing to be my mentor to show me what the right thing to do.

Those kids will need a lot of therapy and a mentor guiding them. I think, in few months they completely can change. Most of them say, "I never knew I was going to turn into this person. I never knew I was going to be the wonderful person who I always want to be. Because all that I’ve been doing in the bush they forced me to do. I didn’t mean to do it." So I think in most cases, they are very young, they can still change.